India mulls 70pc duty on China, Malaysia firms

NEW DELHI: India, the largest importer of Chinese solar equipment, proposed a 70 per cent safeguard duty on cells and modules shipped from China and Malaysia, citing “threat of serious injury” to the domestic industry.

Acting on an application by five local cell and module makers, the directorate-general of Safeguards, Customs and Central Excise made the proposal in a document dated January 5. It recommended the levy remain in effect for 200 days.

“Existing critical circumstances justify the immediate imposition of a provisional safeguard duty in order to save the domestic industry from further serious injury, which would be difficult to repair,” said the Finance Ministry in the document, also citing the potential for job losses.

India’s annual manufacturing capacity for solar cells is only around three gigawatts, compared with the average requirement of 20GW, according to a government note last month. The rest has to be purchased on the international market, it said.

The nation was the largest solarcell and module importer from China last year, buying a third of that nation’ s US $8 billion (RM32.08 billion) of shipments from January through September, according to research by Bloomberg New Ener- gy Finance.

The ministry’s document said China’s solar exports to India constituted 1.52 per cent of its total global exports during 2012, a figure that surged to almost 22 per cent in 2016.

“India’s solar story is built on Chinese panels and the duty, if implemented, would mean the end of record low solar tariffs that we saw in 2017,” said Vandana Gombar, a BNEF analyst, here.

The Indian government’s proposal came after five domestic manufacturers — Adani Enterprises Ltd-backed Mundra Solar PV Ltd, Indosolar Ltd, Jupiter Solar Power Ltd, Web sol Energy Systems Ltd and Helios Photo Voltaic Ltd — filed an application on December 5 last year seeking a duty on imports of solar cells “whether or not assembled in modules or panels”. Bloomberg